Topic: What's wrong with this wav file?

[George]

The top half of the wav looks, well, fucked.  It looks like I brickwalled, but I didn't.  The file itself sounds great upon listening to the dat master and listening to the wav on my pc.  I kept the levels on my M1 at -2db and the MP-2 levels below the half way mark.  This was the rig and location:

Sound Professionals at853 omni's, clipped to the sides of my glasses>mp-2>M1 (16/44).

I was standing about 3' feet away from a PA speaker that was on a stand (about 6' up) and about a foot to my right pointing straight ahead to the crowd.  The sound was great (to my ears) from where I was standing (right of center) in a small bar.  Just wondering if the way the wav file looks on top in cd wave is an indication of anything that might be wrong.  If anyone can tell me how to host a mp3 sample, I'll gladly do it. 

Thanks for any tips, opinions, advice!

[Brian Skalinder]

Looks to me like it's just a function of CDWave trying to display a LOT of data in the top level view.  The zoomed-in waveform looks just fine.  And it sounds fine.  I'd say it's strictly a CDWave display issue - there's simply not enough time /screen space between peaks in the top level view to display gaps between them.

[George]

Looks to me like it's just a function of CDWave trying to display a LOT of data in the top level view.  The zoomed-in waveform looks just fine.  And it sounds fine.  I'd say it's strictly a CDWave display issue - there's simply not enough time /screen space between peaks in the top level view to display gaps between them.

Ok, I was thinking the same thing.  The zoomed in wave does look great.  Thanks for chiming in Brian!   

[fozzy]

I've seen the same thing in wavelab and freaked out for a second till I realized it was a zoom issue

[dgodwin]

I always thought that was due to either a limiter/compressor on the PA, or brickwalling the mic pre's.  Learn something new every day.

[kskreider]

It looks to me like you did a kick as job of keeping your levels right at, or just below zero.  WTG.

[cleantone]

I want to chime in to say that I would guess that there was a really high SPL. Some part of your chain was getting maxed out or really close to it. "Brickwalling" is not just something that can happen at the preamp gain stage. Your mics can be hitting thier peak alot too. If this sounds fine to you than that is what really matters of course. I don't think you did anything wrong so to speak. I do think it must have been loud as hell though. Any louder and something in your chain might not have handled the volume. The drastic squared look is because it is "zoomed out" so much but it is still obvious that you were maxing out at a certain stage of your setup. Post a pic of just one tune if you don't mind.

[momule]

looks like some compression.  most of the SBD's I pull look just like this.

[George]

Post a pic of just one tune if you don't mind.

You got it. 

Thanks for the thoughts on this guys, I really appreciate it.  Yes, this show was very loud, I wore the ety earplugs and towards the end my guys felt a little uncomfortable.  Guess thats what I get for standing so close to a PA speaker.  I have a question, what site can I use to upload a mp3 sample, in case you guys wanna hear a track to get more insight into what it sounds like?  Thanks again all and +T's all around. 

[George]

are those little skinny areas the audience?

Actually, that's the singer chatting or the band fiddling around a little (a guitar string here or a cymbal tap).  There wasn't much crowd noise at all     

[Brian Skalinder]

The drastic squared look is because it is "zoomed out" so much but it is still obvious that you were maxing out at a certain stage of your setup. Post a pic of just one tune if you don't mind.

CT - I'm curious what about the pic leads you to this conclusion?  In CDWave's zoomed-in view, the waveform appears to have normal dynamics, with no flattening of the peaks due to an overload situation (whether at the mics, preamp, or ADC).  Maybe the waveform looks okay simply due to the specific portion of the waveform zoomed-in, so yeah - a pic of one tune would help.  But I suspect the zoomed-out view will look less flat, and the zoomed-in view will look essentially the same - assuming the zoomed-in view in the original pic isn't different from most of the rest of the waveform.  IMO it's the zoomed-in view that really counts here - if it were squared off like the zoomed-out view, then I'd agree with your conclusion above, but since it looks "normal", I figure it's just fine.

I have a question, what site can I use to upload a mp3 sample, in case you guys wanna hear a track to get more insight into what it sounds like?

Just make it < 512k and you can upload it directly to TS.  A 512k MP3 oughta be enough to give us an idea of how it sounds.

[George]

Just make it < 512k and you can upload it directly to TS.  A 512k MP3 oughta be enough to give us an idea of how it sounds.

Ok, here you go...

[kskreider]

It looks to me like you did a kick ass job of keeping your levels right at, or just below zero.  WTG.

[George]

It looks to me like you did a kick ass job of keeping your levels right at, or just below zero.  WTG.

LOL.  Yeah, I read that before...thanks bro   

[kskreider]

It looks to me like you did a kick ass job of keeping your levels right at, or just below zero.  WTG.

LOL.  Yeah, I read that before...thanks bro   

I figured, but then I listened to you small clip and felt like it needed to be repeated.

I am editing a stealth set I made last night in CDWave as I type this.  I have some hard tall peaks that have that squared look in the top frame, but down below you can tell, by site and sound both that it is just a lot of wav form in close proximity that is hugging ZERO.

[cleantone]

Brian,

I probably didn't put in words well what I mean to say. I have a bad habit of that. I'm sure the recording is fine, I mean to say that I am not stating that it is definitly overloaded, or literally brickwalled by what I can see. I just mean that he hit a max gain somewhere. I have to assume it was the superloud audio he was recording. It could have easily been the PA being limited. I'm only going on what I see of course but the dynamics seem to be limited. Simply extremly loud music, the mics, the PA, the MP-2? I don't know, but it looks like this was limited by something somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find some peaks that are flattened when you zoom way in. This can and probably does still sound fine of course. Obviously the lower part of the pics look fine. Maybe he was hitting the MP-2 pretty hard before the M1.

In short, it looks like the peaks do not go over a certain level, but not because of the volume of the music. Maybe that makes sense.